Women being hit hardest by AIDS

Page Tools

AIDS is growing more rapidly among women than men in almost
every part of the world, a new report has found.

The "feminisation" of the disease appears to reflect a maturing
of the epidemic, suggest the authors of the annual AIDS update
prepared by the United Nations, World Health Organisation and World
Bank.

More seemingly low-risk women, many of them married, are being
infected by men who acquired the virus through high-risk behaviour
years ago.

The trend is most advanced in sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS
epidemic began and which is home to more than half the world's
HIV-infected people. Women there now comprise 57 per cent of people
living with the virus.

From 2002 to 2004, the percentage of infected people who are
women rose or stayed the same in all regions.

"This is an emerging pattern ... This has profound
implications," said Peter Piot, the Belgian epidemiologist who
heads UNAIDS. "We have to put women at the heart of the response to
AIDS if we want to stop this epidemic."

The evolving risk to women is a main theme in the report, which
paints a mosaic portrait of the global epidemic.

In all, 39.4 million people are infected with HIV now, up from
37.8 million last year. About 3.1 million people have died of the
infection in 2004, out of about 55 million deaths from all causes
worldwide.

About 25.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected,
about 7.4 per cent of all adults. The Caribbean has the
next-highest prevalence, with 2.3 per cent of adults and 440,000
people overall. The prevalence is below 1 per cent in China and
India, but the epidemic in those areas is expanding and potentially
explosive.

The growing proportion of infected women reflects the cumulative
effect of many risks. They include the fact that women, especially
teenage girls, are more physiologically vulnerable than men; the
inability of many women to require their partners to use condoms;
the infidelity of husbands and the high-risk behaviour of other
male partners; the exploitation of young women by older men,
especially in southern Africa; and rape and other forms of sexual
coercion.

In South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, women aged 15 to 24 are
three to six times more likely to become infected than young men.
In the Caribbean, young women's risk is twice that of men.

Marriage is no protection against infection - and in some places
appears to increase the risk. In India, where about 5.1 million
people are infected, women account for a quarter of new
infections.

Among those who test positive at prenatal clinics, 90 per cent
say they are in monogamous, long-term relationships.

Black women now account for 72 per cent of infections in females
in the United States. A recent study of a low-income section of New
York found that women were twice as likely to be infected by a
husband or long-term lover as by a casual sex partner.

In some places, however, women's plight is improving, says the
report. For example, of women attending prenatal clinics in Uganda
and Kenya those infected fell from 13 per cent in 1998 to about 9
per cent in 2002. At clinics in Ethiopia, the proportion fell from
14 per cent to 12 per cent.